Aotearoa Weekly Kōrero 19/4/2024
Aotearoa Weekly Kōrero 19/4/2024
Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that doesn’t justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like a hippo
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how's it going?
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Been to the audiologists to get some hearing aids. I was a very regular clubber in my teens/twenties, so many live gigs with massive sound. Good at the time, but oh boy, tough to hear people talking to me now.
Can’t watch tv without subtitles, biut to be honest, I wonder if I’ll still need subs even with the aids when I get them. So many tv shows and movies have mumbled unclear dialog, but I’ll give it a try. Hopefully Mrs Floofah won’t be prodding me anymore when I can’t hear her speaking!!
As I understand it, modern TV/movies can be hard to hear dialogue even for people with perfect hearing because the sound can be designed for a different speaker setup. Most commonly you're watching through TV speakers when the sound is set up for surround sound.
In that case, go through your TV settings looking for Dynamic Range Compression, Night Mode, or in my case it was labeled something like "Voice".
I don't have surround sound but have heard you can adjust volumes so the speaker doing voice is louder, if that's your setup.
Also pretty sure you can get headphones for TVs which can help.
We have a 5.1 surround system for the TV. The individual speakers are setup to balance the volumes from each. If I connect headphones, it shuts off the speakers so I loose the surround sound immersion effects.
My hearing it very poor with higher frequencies, hence a big reduction in clarity even with normal voices, any mumbled voices are nearly impossible.
For the surround sound, I've heard many let you boost the centre speaker for voices but I don't have surround sound so can't confirm.
For headphones, my grandmother had them (this was at least 15 or 20 years ago) and everyone else could still hear the TV.
A bit of a search and apparently many TVs have a setting to play out both, otherwise use a splitter on the HDMI or optical connection used for your surround sound. This way you get both. Just make sure the TV headphones you buy take the right connection type.
I’ve messed around for years trying to get something viable, not only for me, but also Mrs Floofah, who doesn’t need aids yet, in order to watch and listen to the same thing. The big issue were the delays in the add on headphone routing. Typically they cause an unacceptable delay in the sound. Remember we need the "normal" full sound, just me needing the boost.
I await the arrival of my aids with interest, hopefully they’ll fit in with our existing sound system, and also allow Mrs Floofah to tell me something without using a megaphone!!
As the aids are local just to me, and the sound they receive is via my normal ear structure, this may be the best solution. I await with interest.
Huh interesting about the delay! I wouldn't have expected that as it seems that would make the headphones a bit useless or at least frustrating to use.
My grandmother was pretty deaf, she had trouble hearing with her hearing aids in, so she probably didn't notice the TV and headphones being out of sync.
My auntie got hearing aids that connect to her phone via Bluetooth and she loves them! I also have a few other family members with hearing aids and they wish they got them earlier. Hopefully you enjoy them!
BTW comments on our posts by Lemmy.world users seem to be delayed by about 3 days, which is related to the Lemmy.world federation issues we've been having which is due to a Lemmy bug combined with our server being on the opposite side of the world to Lemmy.world and becauof the size of Lemmy.world.
I found the delay occurs with Bluetooth headphones connected via an adapter with an optical link to the TV audio. Physically plugging headphones in works fine, no sync delay, but it turns off the sound system audio. Could never get it properly working on our TV/sound system.
My aid fitting has been delayed until next Monday, audiologist is sick apparently.
Hmmm, this Lemmy.world issue is a nuisance. Maybe I should create an account elsewhere, can I do that and keep everything? IDK how all the Lemmy stuff links together etc.
Sorry it takes 4 days to get a response to you! It's not really lemmy.world's fault, lemmy has a bug (more like a design problem) that means servers can only send one federation activity (post, comment, or vote) at a time. It has to wait for a response before sending the next one. Because their server is on the other side of the world to ours (plus some other technical reasons), we can only receive around 4 or 5 activities per second. Unfortunately they have gone over that threshold, it's so big they are creating more activities than we can receive. There are other servers in our area having the same issue, auzzie.zone is over 5 days behind! There are various people working on various things to help this, but it's all taking time.
So as for accounts, they only exist on one instance. A bit like an email address where dave@gmail.com would be different to dave@outlook.com. However, the last lemmy update added the ability to export your settings (found on your settings page on the website). So now you can create a new account on another instance and move all your settings over, including the communities you follow, but this isn't quite the same as moving your account. For example, you'll have to log in to the lemmy.world account to see any replies to comments you made on that account. Nothing is "forwarded" to your new account (Mastodon actually has something along these lines, but Lemmy doesn't yet).
There are many people on this instance who use multiple accounts. Because how the federation works in lemmy, different instances see different posts in the Local feed (only communities hosted on that instance) and the All feed. This is because the All feed is posts from all the communities that the members of your instance are subscribed to. Different instances have different members with different subscriptions and so you'll see different content. So many people like to have a few different accounts and switch between them,
Lemmy.world is so massive it would be interesting to hear what other instances are like in comparison! On lemmy.nz our Local feed is mostly posts in the newzealand or politics communities, with occasional regional posts. All has a lot more content, but at the moment we are missing lemmy.world posts for the most part. Because of a special prefetching that's set up to try to help with the issue, we get them straight away but with no votes on them. We can't prefetch the votes so they take 3 days to come across, by which point the posts are all three days old. So the Hot posts never have lemmy.world content at the moment because they have no votes on them.
There are plenty of other instances too. At this point most instances are up to date with both lemmy.world and us, just the handful that are having problems. You can actually check which ones are having issues - here's lemmy.world's status. Lemmy federates with lots of other platforms so many are mastodon, kbin, or others, but you can have a look for an instance and check how it's doing by putting it into that site.
I guess the other thing to know is that different sites de-federate from each other. For example, beehaw.org is a nice, big, friendly instance, but they defederated from lemmy.world because Beehaw are strict moderators and have a vision for their site and lemmy.world was too big, too many users from lemmy.world causing issues on beehaw. Some instances don't defederate from anyone, but that can be a bit crazy too. Most of the larger instances would be fine to join, though.
Accounts are also free, so just pick any and if you don't like it try another! Most will have registration applications turned on though (so you can't use your new account until you've been approved), as spam is becoming quite a problem and reviewing each new user is an easy way to avoid being the instance spambots like to use. But I'm sure you're patient enough, most instance will approve new users so long as the follow the instructions.
Happy to answer questions but I know it's going to take 3 or 4 days before I see your response so maybe pick an instance and sign up, then come back here and ask your questions with your new account 😆
Thanks for your detailed reply Dave, very much appreciated. I’ve signed up to Lemmy.nz with a localised username - FloofahNZ
Great that you're getting hearing aids! Probably a whole ton of birdsong awaits you.
I’ve fought shy of getting hearing aids for too long, I’m hoping they will remove my stress and embarrassment of often needing people to repeat what they are saying to me.
The birdsong, especially the piwakawakas as they flit around close by indeed will be lovely to hear clearly again.
I hope they remove your stress too! I think there's an adjustment period but hopefully it will be fast. People underestimate the amount of social isolation that comes with hearing loss.
Thanks, me too, and I’m sure Mrs Floofah will be happy as well. She gets frustrated by my poor hearing. I get them next Thursday. Already loaded the app on my phone and iPad!!
Hopefully I will be able to report back here very positively.
Didn't realise they could come with an app, that's interesting.
I'm excited for you!
I’ll report back, hopefully positively. My appointment has been delayed until next Monday.
Okay, looking forward to it!
I’ve got my hearing aids, boy are they great!! Has transformed my hearing capability. The app has allowed me to tweak the settings, and amazingly when wearing them, I no longer hear my tinnitus hiss as badly. Don’t know how that works as I can clearly hear higher frequencies. Has really improved my speech understanding, it’s all so clear now.
Hey, thanks so much for updating me!! Sorry it took me so long to reply, was taking a break from social media.
I'm so excited for you, it all sounds wonderful. The lowering of tinnitus is an unexpected bonus! Really glad it improved your speech understanding. Made my day reading your comment.
Honestly we almost always watch tv/movies with subtitles on and we don't have any hearing problems. The most annoying is when the dialogue is soft but the music sound effects are way louder in the next scene so you're juggling the volume up and down
Been using subs for a very long time and I thought the other evening while watching, I wonder if having to actually listen and comprehend what’s spoken, might be tough to revert to after everything being so clear from the subs.
I used to DJ house and techno in the 90s… what? Was someone speaking? It’s bad 😣.
Do you suffer tinnitus? I wonder how the aids will help overcome that in my ears. They say they will, but I need to wait another week before they arrive to hear how they work for me.